Andy Warhol: An Innocent Dunce

Andy Warhol allegedly possessed an IQ score of 86 and was most famous for painting a can of soup.

He was not an evil man, but one lifted to obscene heights by a drug-addicted hippie generation who was pathologically obsessed with "statements". Art is not about statements relating to one's petty childhood angst or "confrontation with Americana". Art is timelessness, and Andy Warhol's work had a shelf life surpassed by actual Campbell's soup.

Who hasn't been on a surreal vacation and upon driving home dreaded their return to a stuffy office, every familiar landmark and mini-mart alongside the road slumping their shoulders another inch? It's truly how one feels after exploring the timeless works of the Masters then being reminded that the mouth-breathing masses would rather look at a soup can, reliving the same satire over and over. There is nothing more agonizing than the mundane. There is no intelligent enemy less bearable to be in the presence of than a friendly simpleton you haven't the heart to dismiss. Nauseating.

Whilst Warhol was said to be a competent traditional illustrator early in his career, the hippie climate must have turned him into yet another "profound statement" cash-cow, thriving on cheap irony and highlighting quirks of industrial living that everyone else already saw. And the fact that everyone else already saw it made him a "folk art" hit for the same reason rock music was exploding: The newly literate Plebeian (over)population views art as a social event and passtime more so than a spiritual experience or ode to heroism. Sarcastic tomato soup cans and lyrics about "hanging out with chicks" would ultimately exterminate any aristocratic fine art culture dwindling in the American mainstream. Self-exploration would start, and end, at age 15, and any pun or revelation pandering to such would become "iconic".

These disgusting paintings speak for themselves. Whilst it's easy to imagine post-singularity spacefarers millennia from now marveling at Rembrandt's brilliant use of light, shadow, and depth and regarding his works as borderline-Holy relics of Terran life, it's extremely difficult to imagine a pair of Cheech & Chong-esque losers marveling at this dumb soup can (and the so-obvious-why-bother statement it makes about modern life) in a more enlightened age. "Hip" is mental illness which correlates to low intelligence and lack of honor.

Mark Rothko: Infant or Caveman?

Mark Rothkowitz aka Mark Rothko is the subject of some of the most mind-numbingly retarded art criticism of all time. It's no big secret that abstract art, with its see-whatever-you-want nature, is endlessly leveraged by Bolshevists, NAMBLA, you name it. Rothko epitomizes this: People see whatever they want to see in his record-breaking $72 million paintings.

And that's the beauty of painting rectangles.



If I told you that the above image was an Indigenous American cavepainting dating from 3,000 years before Christ, you'd really have no choice but to believe me and grow sleepy as I digressed into a history of corn crops, basketweaving... goddamn... ZZZzzz.

But that's actually a Mark Rothko painting, and has a similar effect on libertine urban degenerates as does Benny Hinn on hypochondriacs.

Rothko's influence on modern aesthetics is staggering; if you're an idiot. I once had someone point to various objects throughout a mall highlighing how nearly all of them had Rothko elements. The Gap logo is a blue rectangle, and many young minorities wear brightly contrasting football jerseys with solid orange bars across the shoulders. I can't say I ever really took this person's opinion on anything seriously ever again.

Like Jackson Pollock, there's not much to say about Rothko's 'art'. He knew dark blue and dark purple went well together, and black and grey, and green and orange. Rothko was however connected with shady artworld figures throughout his career and probably had a great, quick-to-bribe, publicist.

Rothko struggled throughout his life with the "abstract" label, often denying entirely that he was part of such a movement.

At first it was pretty clear that he just painted bland rectangles intended to be hung behind a house plant, or perhaps intended for an actual painting to be mounted on. As time went on and the financial demand for his paintings surged, he seemed to extremely gradually take up the infamous abstract habit of nonsensical psychobabble; at first reluctantly accepting that his rectangle was a metaphor for Roman feminism, or some random crap like that, then ultimately becoming a home shopping network shill and 'playing along'. Previously nice looking rectangles for your dentist's office became 'artistic eras' defined by the (unspecified) struggles of his life.

Although the novel-length attempts at pyschoanalyzing Rothko's work are filled with hilarity (and Roger Kimball's "The Rape of the Masters" touches upon some of the most memorable), the one that really stands out to me is how Rothko's "eras" are placed into a typology by experts.

Rothko, literally, painted rectangles of solid color. Anyone can emulate Rothko and come up with a finished product in 5-10 minutes. So how did art critics know when Rothkos later life depression and eventual suicide were reflected in his "dark era"?

He used darker colors. No, seriously. The rectangles were often dark green instead of medium green. This was the "dark era" delving into "uncharted levels of depression". I'm sure they had a good laugh about it.

Here's a little experiment for you: Stare at your bathroom wall.

Chances are, your bathroom wall is some nice color, be it a pale blue or purple stucco or biege ceramic tiling. Now imagine that it was painted by a man who committed suicide in old age. No wait! Before you really stare at it, know before hand that this wall is... Filled with emotion. People have fainted while gazing into it. Stare at it and let your eyes water up, your spine tingle.

Quite predictably if you look at anything remotely aesthetically pleasing for this period of time KNOWING that you must pour your emotion into it; the solid color itself will begin to remind you of your deceased parent, your unheard-from ex-girlfriend, the sadness of animals having to live by devouring other animals. It's really not that complicated. The catch is that the paintings aren't evoking these emotions, you are.

Now if you're moderately literate, go paint a few rectangles (actually Rothko sort of played that niche out so try some other basic shape) and market them with gibberish about the Hussite struggle against caste-based chauvinism, then at the end say "metaphorically, of course" so that the viewer can hear whatever analogy he wanted for whatever phobia or obsession he's into . 72 million dollars await your estate.

More Jackson Pollock

Just kidding, this is actually just some low bandwidth clip-art of party confetti. If you don't want to fall for this in the future then just note the superior shading technique: Pollock spent 90% of his life too hammered to pull off this sort of geometry.

Is Jackson Pollock the Worst Artist of All Time?

Jackson Pollock 'paints' paint.


That is to say, not even the most drugged-out, politically motivated abstract art enthusiast can pretend that there's anything to 'get'. This is because, thank God, Jackson Pollock's 'patented technique' of heaving blobs of paint at a roll of paper on the floor was photo-documented.

This left no room for Freudo-Marxo-Gay-Luddite art critics to make up stories about Pollock living in an abandoned lighthouse for 7 years, painting subliminal sub-paintings below his eventual 'textural' exterior to keep amateur eyes away. No. It was just a middle aged alcoholic throwing paint on the floor.

Jackson Pollock at 'work'... If this was a painting it would be his only good painting.

Even Mark Rothko, an idiot who painted solid rectangles, left enough blobby crap inside of the rectangle that someone could allege that he was painting an "existential cloud scene". Still unlike Rothko, Pollock was not even a tasteful colorist; his policy seemed to be 'the more the merrier' just like his talentless peer Andy Warhol. Jackson Pollock's paintings are such naked, elementary scribbles devoid of mystery that you wonder if the guy who discovered him and told people he was profound was Alan Sokal. Somebody was looking for a challenge.

The excuse Jackson Pollock sympathizers do make is that Pollock's art wasn't about aesthetics or even art per se; but about the energy and sporadic process. The very fact that the Jackson Pollock let loose and that this mural of splattered nothingness is the immortal result.

Of course... Since Jackson Pollock wasn't famous for anything else in the first place, only a genetically inferior retard would pretend the above explanation makes any sense.

Let's PRETEND Jackson Pollock actually was some polarizing figure which made a giant roll of paper he vomited on a relic worthy of pilgrimage. Isn't this the same thing abstract art degenerates whine about in regards to real art? That it's 'history worship' dependent on physical metaphors rather than the 'pure emotion' of abstract?

There is literally nothing likeable about Jackson Pollock or his work. He was an unremarkable man who painted confetti. I try to briefly and simply analyze why each of the worst artists of all time was given any attention at all, and Pollock may be the most difficult.

My hypothesis thus far is that the abstract art community - being repressed, unhealthy emotional cripples - simply grew excited watching Pollock's highly physical (and minimally mental) painting method. You see, after years of cognitive dissonance, abstract artists increasingly reject anything relating to realism, however they still suffer from the same low IQs and physical impulsiveness as the average jock. Here are people who want more badly than anything to chase an inflatable ball around like their fellow idiots who were never sucked into the painful delusion of deepness. And here was a man they could watch move around and 'do stuff', yet who was making a statement against physical reality by painting things indecipherable to living creatures and forensic scientists alike. Wow! Was it like a sneaky way to own boring sports memorobilia without being disowned by your suicidal life partner?